Ben Burns

Hello! I am an incoming CS Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech. Until recently, I was an undergraduate at UMass Amherst studying math and CS, and was honored to be advised by Markos Katsoulakis and Benjamin Zhang. My general interests are in applications of probability and in mathematical machine learning.

I am passionate about computer science education, especially for introductory courses. During my time at a UMass, I was an Undergraduate Course Assistant (UCA) for Formal Language Theory, a Head UCA for both Algorithms and Foundations of Programming, and a UCA program coordinator. I am proud to have been recognized with one of the inaugural Lifetime UCA awards.

blog

• [2024-07-15] Navigating the CICS Course Requirements
• [2024-05-21] Advice for UMass Math/CS undergrads interested in research
• [2024-04-21] UMassCTF 2024 writeups
• [2023-06-25] "Missing Skills" not taught by the UMass CS curriculum

news

• [2024-06-24] I presented a poster at CAIMS 2024.
• [2024-06-17] This week I am attending QMSS 2024 at Queen's University
• [2024-05-01] I was honored with one of the inaugural Lifetime UCA awards.
• [2024-04-20] I authored four challenges for UMassCTF 2024 this weekend.
• [2024-04-19] I presented our mean-field games approach to SGM in the UMass Theory Seminar and at Mass URC this week.
• [2023-10-03] I presented our work on HJB regularizers for SGM in the UMass Theory Seminar.
• [2023-09-03] I am organizing the inaugural UMass SIAM seminar series.
• [2023-06-02] I will be participating in the 2023 UMass Math REU under the supervision of Markos Katsoulakis and Benjamin Zhang.